


My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the ER

by whumphoarder



Series: Lactose Intolerant Peter [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Appendicitis, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lactose Intolerance, Major Illness, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Poor Life Choices, Sick Peter Parker, Sickfic, Stomach Ache, Surgery, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Vomiting, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 09:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whumphoarder/pseuds/whumphoarder
Summary: Peter’s chronic lactose intolerance and propensity for making poor life choices means that Tony is used to seeing the kid inflict suffering on himself. But something about this time is different.





	My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the ER

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hopeless_hope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_hope/gifts).



> Once again, mega thanks to [Sally](https://sallyidss.tumblr.com/) for beta reading and constant cheerleading, and to [Cat](https://xxx-cat-xxx.tumblr.com/) for all your ideas and encouragement.

Having just shuffled back from the bathroom, Peter flopped face down onto the couch in the common area with a groan. “Mr. Staark...” he moaned, rolling his head to the side.

Sitting in a nearby recliner, Tony didn’t so much as glance up from the Starkpad he was tapping at. “I don’t wanna hear it, kid.”

“But my _stomach_ …” Peter whined. The offending organ let out an angry sounding growl.

“Yeah, no shit,” his mentor retorted. “That’s what happens when you decide to eat an entire pizza.”

“Ugh…” Peter groaned, twisting around to wrap his arms under himself. “Please don’t talk about shit right now…” At Tony’s snort of laughter, he went on, “And it wasn’t a pizza, it was a calzone.”

“Oh my bad,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “So a pizza, but folded in half.”

“‘S’totally different,” Peter mumbled into the cushion.

Heaving out a sigh, Tony pushed himself up from the chair. He moved the short distance over to the couch and nudged the kid’s feet aside so he could sit. “Pete, you baffle me—how can someone so smart be simultaneously so dumb?”

Peter lifted his head from the sofa to give Tony a weak grin. “May says it’s a gift.”

Deciding he wasn’t likely to get anymore work done that evening, Tony flipped on the TV and pulled up Netflix to search for something to take the kid’s mind off of it, eventually settling on season six of Supernatural.

As the opening credits played, Peter sat up and flipped around to lay with his head on his mentor’s lap. Tony started lazily running his fingers through the kid’s curls. As much as he always threatened to just let Peter suffer next time he decided to be a dumbass, he never really followed through.

Peter let his arms circle around his stomach. “It was actually kinda hurting before dinner,” he admitted.

“This is not helping your case, kid.”

“But when I told Mr. Rogers, he said food might help,” Peter mumbled.

Tony quirked an eyebrow. “And did you remind Steve that you’re lactose intolerant when he advised you to eat a whole pizza?”

Peter frowned. “Well, _no_ , but…”

“Then I don’t wanna hear it,” Tony cut him off with an eye-roll.

They both sat there silently for a few moments, watching the show.

“...It was a calzone, Mr. Stark.”

**X**

Several episodes later, Peter returned from another trip to the bathroom and carefully sat back down on the other end of the sofa. He curled up against the armrest, looking utterly miserable. “I threw up,” he mumbled.

Tony frowned—Peter didn’t usually get nauseous as a result of dairy, but it still happened occasionally. “Did it help?” he asked.

Peter just shrugged. “Not really.” He pulled one of the sofa pillows over and hugged it to his middle.

They made it through another half episode before Peter suddenly moaned, “Think I’m gonna puke again.”

Tony immediately glanced over at the kid, who was swallowing hard as he struggled to push himself up to sitting. “Oh, shit. Okay, hang on,” Tony said, getting up and snagging the nearest trash can before hurrying back over.

“‘M sorry,” Peter murmured as Tony sat beside him and held the bin under his chin. He drew in a shaky breath and spit out a string of saliva. “I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay, kiddo,” Tony assured. All traces of annoyance he’d been harboring at Peter’s poor life choices had dried up now. He switched to holding the bin with one hand to free up his other hand to rub the kid’s back. “Do you wanna try to move to the bathroom?”

Peter hesitated a second and then shook his head slightly. “Hurts more when I move.”

“What hurts?” Tony’s brow furrowed. “Your stomach?”

“Yeah,” Peter said through a wince. “Dunno why it hurts so much this time...”

They waited there for a few minutes, Peter breathing deeply, until finally the nausea won out and he heaved up the rest of his dinner.

Tony grimaced as Peter coughed into the bin. “Alright, alright, just get it out,” he muttered, patting the kid on the back.

When he was done, Tony lowered the bin back to the floor and Peter got shakily to his feet.

“I think I wanna go to bed now,” the kid mumbled.

Tony hesitated. Peter still looked miserable and had a greenish tone to his skin. “You sure? Because I don’t mind sitting up with you if it means you don’t redecorate my carpet. Or my guest room.”

“I’m sure,” Peter said with a small nod. “I’m really sorry about all this,” he added. “I swear I’m never eating dairy again.”

Tony huffed lightly, getting to his feet. “You’ve definitely said that before.”

“Yeah but this time I mean it,” Peter insisted as they started walking to his bedroom. “Swearing everything off, starting now. Calzones, pizza, nachos, ice cream…”

Tony smirked at him. “What about cheesecake?”

There was a pause. “Alright, swearing _almost_ everything off,” he amended.

“That’s what I thought, kid.”

**X**

It was several hours later that Tony was pulled from his sleep by someone shaking his shoulder. His eyes snapped open and he gasped awake, his hand immediately flying to his chest, ready to deploy his armor at a moment’s notice.

“M-Mr. Stark?” Peter’s small voice asked.

Tony sat up and flipped on the lamp, blinking at the sudden brightness and mentally cursing himself for having FRIDAY disable verbal warnings for intruders as she ran her monthly system maintenance.

But those thoughts were quickly shoved aside when he took in the sight of the kid before him. Peter’s eyes were red and watery and he was hunched over himself and trembling slightly as he stood, one arm cradled around his stomach.

Tony sighed—looks like he might be cleaning that guest room after all.

“What is it?” he asked in a low voice. “Did you throw up again?”

Tears were coming down Peter’s cheeks now. “No. Or, I mean, yeah but…” He let out a choked sob. “Sorry, I just... My stomach hurts r-really bad…. um, I think… s-something’s wrong.” He inhaled a deep, shuddering breath.

Tony sat up a little straighter. Lactose intolerance sucked, sure, but he’d never seen Peter brought to tears over a stomach ache before. Something wasn’t right. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Where does it hurt?”

Shakily, Peter moved a hand to the middle of his abdomen, just over his belly button. “Um, started like here, and then, uh—” he cut himself off, eyes going wide as he suddenly pressed his fist against his mouth.

Tony didn’t have to be told what was about to occur. He threw the covers off of himself and swung his legs out of bed, grabbing the kid’s arm to try to steer him in the direction of the ensuite. But at the slight movement, Peter let out an agonized cry. Rather than vomiting as Tony expected, he doubled over even further on himself, dropping the hand from his mouth to cage his side.

“Whoa, okay, you’re okay,” Tony assured, gently tugging the kid over to sit down on the edge of the mattress. He side-eyed the trash can on the other side of the room. “Still gonna puke?”

Peter swallowed hard and shook his head slightly.

Shifting his gaze down to Peter’s side—which the kid was still holding protectively—Tony frowned. “That’s where it’s hurting now? Lower right side?” he clarified.

Peter nodded a bit.

The gears were turning in Tony’s brain now. “Sharp pain, or like it’s aching?”

“Sharp,” Peter gasped out. “R-Really sharp.”

Tony reached out a hand and felt the warmth coming off the kid’s forehead. His mind going back to an incident with his roommate freshman year at MIT, he sighed deeply. “You still got your appendix, kid?”

Another small nod.

“Alright, well you two enjoy your last few hours together,” Tony muttered, picking his phone up from the nightstand.

**X**

Now that a surgical team from SHIELD was en route to the compound, the next challenge was getting Peter down to Medbay.

With the amount of pain the kid was in, Tony briefly considered calling Rogers down to carry him, but the look of horror on Peter’s face when he mentioned that plan sent him back to the drawing board. His next idea was to have DUM-E push one of the wheelchairs up from Medbay. That was working for a bit, until FRIDAY (who’d recently come back online) reported that both the robot and chair were stuck somewhere on the eighth floor between a glass coffee table and a potted ficus.

In the end, Tony settled for just looping the kid’s arm around his shoulders and more or less dragging him to the elevator. As soon as the doors shut behind them, Peter promptly puked.

“Sorry,” he choked out, the small amount that was left in his stomach dribbling down his chin and shirt. “Oh no, your shoes…” he moaned, his gaze dropping to the mess he’d made on the floor.

“I know, kid, it’s okay,” Tony assured, adjusting his grip on Peter and trying not to think about the vomit soaking into his ridiculously expensive designer slippers. “Never liked these much anyway.”

When the doors finally slid open, Tony did a double take.

Pepper was standing in front of the elevator, looking surprisingly unrumpled for being fresh off the plane from Japan. She still wore her coat—her passport peeking out over the edge of the front pocket—and her hand was resting on the handle of the rolling suitcase beside her. Her gaze quickly traveled from the trembling kid, down to the vomit on the floor, and then up to Tony’s worried face.

She raised her eyebrows, some mixture of amusement and concern coming over her features. “Rough night, boys?”

Relief washed over Tony instantly—even a horribly jetlagged Pepper was about a hundred times better able to handle a crisis of this nature than he was.

“Welcome home, honey,” Tony said through a pained smile. Then, nodding to Peter, he went on, “Kid needs to go to Medbay. Pretty sure it’s appendicitis, but the docs say he’ll need a CT or ultrasound to confirm. I’ve got a team coming in.”

She sighed. “Always something with you two…” Rolling the suitcase off to the side, she carefully stepped into the elevator and took Peter’s other elbow to support him. “How are you feeling, Peter?” she asked gently.

“Uh, been better,” Peter mumbled back. He swallowed hard, and then asked in a strained voice, “How was Tokyo?”

Tony huffed out a quick laugh—even barely standing and covered in vomit, the kid was still unfailingly polite.

Pepper shrugged as they started shuffling the whimpering teenager out of the elevator. “Lots of meetings. The company merger is in its final stages now. I brought you back some of those green tea Kit Kats you like.”

At the mention of food, Peter immediately started gagging again. Tony and Pepper stopped walking, supporting him as he dry heaved. There were fresh tears in his eyes by the time the spasms ceased.

“I’m so sorry—you’re almost there, sweetie,” Pepper whispered, rubbing his back consolingly. She shifted her gaze up to Tony. “Have you called May yet?”

“I was getting to that,” Tony replied. In truth, it hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Actually,” he addressed the AI, “FRI, you wanna handle that?”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “FRIDAY, don’t you dare,” she commanded as they started moving towards Medbay again. “That poor woman has suffered enough this year—I will not have her waking up at four a.m. to an automated Irish woman’s voice informing her that her child is about to undergo emergency surgery,” she retorted. “As soon as we drop him off, _I_ will call her.”

Tony couldn’t help but smile— _God,_ he’d missed Pepper.

**X**

It took the doctor less than twenty minutes to confirm the kid’s diagnosis of appendicitis, and less than an hour before he was in surgery. By the time Happy dropped May off at the compound, Peter was already back in the recovery room and Pepper was finally upstairs getting some sleep.

“The surgery went well,” Tony assured the kid’s aunt. “They did it all laparoscopically—no complications. With his healing, the doctors think it will be an easy recovery. Couple days, tops.”

May gave a relieved sigh. “ _Thank you_ ,” she said sincerely. “I felt so awful when you told me—I should have known something was off. He’d been saying his stomach was hurting on and off for the past couple days, but I thought it was just more of the usual because on Thursday he and Ned got milkshakes, and then Friday I found out he had mac and cheese for lunch, so…”

Tony groaned, running a hand over his face in exasperation. “This kid needs to be stopped.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” May said with a scoff. “I’ve been dealing with this since he was in fourth grade. Never in my life have I met someone so insistent on causing his own suffering. If there was a way to stop him, believe me, I would be doing it.”

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe we just need to think outside the box…”

**X**

He didn’t have to wait long to put his new plan into action.

By the next Friday, Peter had been cleared by the medical staff to resume strenuous activity and was back at the compound to spend the night before their upcoming training weekend. Tony sat at the dinner table, watching carefully as the kid heaped first spaghetti and then salad onto his plate. But as soon as Peter's fingers closed around the parmesan cheese shaker, he yelped and jerked his hand back.

At Tony’s chuckle, Peter looked up to stare at his mentor, his expression a mixture of surprise and confusion. “What did you do to my watch?” he demanded, holding out his wrist. An all-caps message was flashing on the screen of the high tech device: THIS FOOD CONTAINS DAIRY.

With a smirk, Tony replied, “Upgrades. Like I told you.”

“It just shocked me!” Peter exclaimed.

Tony rolled his eyes. “C’mon, it’s fifty volts. It’s more of a tingle.”

“That’s not the point,” Peter retorted, throwing his mentor a betrayed look. “You _shocked me_.”

“No, _you_ shocked _yourself,_ ” Tony argued. “We agreed no more dairy. This is just a little reminder so that your self-inflicted torture sessions don’t mask the symptoms of any more organs trying to kill you.”

Peter stuck his lip out in a pout. “I’m totally telling May that you’re shocking me.”

“Go right ahead, kiddo,” Tony said with a laugh. “She’s all for this idea. Even helped me name Karen’s new protocol—Wean The Baby.”

“Oh my god,” Peter groaned. “I hate you both.”

“She’s in total soli- _dairy-_ ty,” Tony went on, a grin spreading across his face. “You’ve been _udder-_ ly prohibited from consuming any more milk products.”

“Have you been working on those all week?” Peter asked, giving him an unamused look. “Because they suck, Mr. Stark.”

Still chuckling, Tony patted the kid’s shoulder. “Eat your pasta, Peter. I ordered tofu cheesecake for dessert.” At Peter’s raised eyebrows, he quickly assured, “It’s really tofu this time—I had Sam test a piece last night. So far he’s in the clear.”

Despite obviously trying to look annoyed, a snort of laughter escaped from the kid. “You made Mr. Wilson try the cheesecake for me?”

Tony huffed. “I didn’t _make_ him do anything—I just offered him a piece. He’s nearly as bad at this lactose intolerance thing as you are.”

“Great,” Peter giggled. “I’m like a medieval king with a wine taster now…”

“Hey, whatever works, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> Other potential titles I was debating:  
>   
> Soli-dairy-ty  
> Danger (Cal)Zone  
> Lactose Intolerance IV: Attack Of the Calzone  
> Lactose Intolerance IV: The Shocking Conclusion  
> Cheesed Off  
> E-lact-ric Shock  
> Shock Therapy  
> Poor Life Choices  
> Don’t Cry Over Spewed Milk  
> Peter and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night  
> Peter Parker Promptly Pukes a Pile of Pepperoni  
> Here We Go Again  
>   
> Please let me know what you think of the story in the comments below!  
> If you ever want to hang out, hit me up on tumblr: [whumphoarder](https://whumphoarder.tumblr.com/)


End file.
